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Skunkworks Partners with Clio

Our strength in marketing legal services follows from the fact that three of our staff have legal practice experience. We know the business of law. For my part, I worked as a sole practitioner for a period prior to moving in-house and eventually joining Skunkworks. My relationship with Clio comes from having used their software to run my own practice. I now feel compelled to spread the gospel (or at least make the option known).

For those of you not familiar with Clio, it’s a web-based suite of practice management software tools specifically designed for sole-practitioners and small firms. Clio is used for time-tracking, billing, managing appointments or deadlines (calendaring), task management, collaborating with clients, document management, and reporting. As a cloud-based solution, Clio works through your web browser on any operating system (including on your smart phone or tablet).

Specifically designed for the legal industry, Clio uses bank-grade encryption with daily security audits to protect your practice information. While the privacy and confidentiality of cloud systems is worth a moment of your professional judgment, my sense is that Clio’s cloud storage is far more secure than most law offices, let alone your briefcase. As always, you’ll need to look at your particular practice and make an assessment of the risks associated with your client data and how best they can be managed.

In contrast to some IT investments with large up-front hardware and software costs, Clio pricing is based on a subscription model at $49/month for lawyers and $25/month for support staff. The nature of a subscription model means that the software is always up to date and won’t chain you to expensive upgrades down the road.Based on my own practice experience Clio is certainly an option worth exploring if you are a small firm considering upgrading your practice management systems. Likewise, if you are leaving a firm to start out on your own. On that note, we’ll be looking to use Clio Connect as a secure back-end for our clients that are interested in experimenting with virtual practices.